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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27888979">What Flavour is Rainbow, Anyway?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune'>merryfortune</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Cakeverse, Bittersweet, Disordered Eating, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Slight Canon Retelling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:13:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,400</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27888979</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aoi remembered Miyu, she began to get a craving for rainbow flavoured ice-cream cake.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sugisaki Miyu/Zaizen Aoi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What Flavour is Rainbow, Anyway?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>   Aoi’s stomach dropped when she realised that she had forgotten something so precious. She also realised that she was really craving rainbow flavoured ice-cream for the first time in ten years when she realised that she had forgotten something so precious as her first friend, Sugisaki Miyu.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi had been a sullen child for many reasons. Her mother had been widowed when her birth father passed away from cancer. Then she remarried in the virtue of an interview and Aoi felt intimidated by this new family she was a part of. Then, just as she climatized to her new big brother and her step-father, her mother and step-father were killed in an accident and their greater family refused to take them in and took their money too. So, they were homeless and broke for a very long period of time. And, to truly top it off, the cherry on the cake was that Zaizen Aoi was a Fork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A Fork was someone who was born unable to taste things that weren’t sweet. Everything else tasted bland. She could smell and have her mouth water of a fine delight of savoury things but the moment she would eat that sizzling steak or crisp, salted brusselsprouts, it would all but turn to dust or sand on her tongue. She could drink espresso coffee and be utterly unaffected by the experience until it was diluted with cream and sugar. It was a difficult but not impossible condition to live with; she had a special cherishing of what she could taste. Ice-cream, chocolate, and other sweets were her greatest weakness but like many Forks, there was something especially alluring about cakes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Big cakes, small cakes, frosted cakes, sugared cakes, chocolate cakes, vanilla cakes. Aoi could hypnotise herself on the hunger that she felt unto cakes. But not all cakes that Aoi was permitted to taste via the strange phenomenon she was born with were the type of cake that could be found in a patisserie’s window, oh no, some Cakes were human.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>  Some Cakes had big smiles and fluffy hair and steel blue eyes. Sugisaki Miyu was one of those people. One of those Cakes who was all human and no pastry. And Miyu was the only one that Aoi had ever tasted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Just as there were tell tale signs that a Fork had been born a Fork, there were tell tale signs that a Cake had been born a Cake. Although, these signs were easily scuffed off as coincidence but Cakes tended to bruise or cut more easily; their flesh underneath their skin also seemed not quite as dark - or sometimes, darker than usual - compared to their Fork or Plate counterparts. But on the whole, the general wisdom or convention was that a Cake could go their entire life without realising they were Cake unless they happened to be kissed, licked, or otherwise tasted by a Fork.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi blushed as the memories of her friendship came rushing back, so sweet and bitter. She licked her lips and that desire for ice-cream, and a very specific flavour and preparation of ice-cream, came back to her mouth. To her tongue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu was just six years old when she had discovered that she was a Cake and that was an age younger than most. It had been an accident, of course. Most discoveries of alignments of being either a Cake or a Plate were accidents. Not the kissing part but the parts which had led up to the kissing part.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They had been playing in the park, as per usual. Playing chaseys, pretending to be airplanes as they zipped around and were just little children in general. Miyu had gotten clumsy and bold at one point. She made a sharp and sudden turn and sent herself flying into the ground. Luckily though, she didn’t fall face first. She went down knees and hands first. She had jarred her wrists and scraped her wrists but as Aoi drew in closer, fretting, Aoi assured her that she was alright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Alright and bleeding. Aoi plopped down beside her and Aoi wiped the blood off. It was candy apple red. It glistened even when smeared in an effort to tidy it up. Aoi stared. Wide-eyed and almost enamoured, licking her lips. She didn’t mean to but there was something odd about Miyu’s scrape. Something about it leapt out at her in a way which made her stomach tighten but not in disgust but in hunger.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Somethin’ the matter?” Miyu asked, innocently, blinking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi shook her head and she played into being extra concerned to hide how peculiar she felt all of a sudden.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “A-Are you okay?” Aoi blurted out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’m fine. It just stings a li’l.” Miyu replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Let me kiss it better then.” Aoi murmured.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu laughed. “You’re so sweet, Aoi-chan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi smiled. She put her hands on her knees, kneading the fabric of her green pinafore, and she leaned in. Miyu kept her knee propped upright so Aoi didn’t have to lean in that far. Aoi closed her eyes and she kissed the scrape. Her mouth watered and her nose translated the smell of dirt and blood, though scant, into something else. Into something sweet and delicious and mouth wateringly good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Thank you, Aoi-chan.” Miyu said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi reared back and she felt as though she now saw the world in a different light. No, a different taste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Miyu-chan…” Aoi murmured. “A-Are you a Cake?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi’s heart pounded in her chest. She remembered being even littler and even younger than she was now and her mother trying to explain her diagnosis to her for the first time. Whilst being a Fork was integral to her understanding of the world, others weren’t quite like that. Some, adults especially, she had been told, liked to keep things like the alignments of Forks, Cakes, and Plates under lock and key, out of the restaurant table, and especially in regards to children because it was “gross” and ruined the sanctity of innocence. Though, not quite in those words, her mother had explained it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi feared that Miyu - or at least Miyu’s parents - would be of that stripe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “A Cake…?” Miyu asked, quizzical in reply. “I don’t know. What’s a Cake?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi could have laughed. Dark and deep and bitter. “Let me explain it to you then…” she said. She got up, too, and extended her hand to Miyu.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu beamed, ever curious, and she accepted Aoi’s hand. Aoi pulled her up, struggling slightly as she was a little bit weak, she could never do the monkey bars, for instance, but Miyu managed to get up. Aoi looked around and decided this was a conversation for private ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Just like they had had a very dear conversation in the cement tunnel, Aoi decided they could have this conversation there as well. She and Aoi settled inside of it, where it was cool and in the shade, even downright cold like a freezer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi explained to Miyu what it meant to be a Fork and what it meant to be a Cake. Perhaps her information was a little bit addled with inexperience but Miyu got the general gist. She thought it was interesting and exciting. So, as far as she knew, her family was a family of Plates and Plates alone. She felt happy to know she had something special or unique that the rest of her family didn’t have and she wanted to make Aoi feel special and unique as well since it had to suck jawbreakers majorly hard to not be able to taste food - and people - who weren’t sweet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu initiated the kiss. She kissed Aoi, all but unthinkingly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They had to make sure, of course. It could have just been a fluke that Aoi thought Miyu’s bloody knee tasted sweet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   It was to be expected as it was a kiss between young children. It was a messy smooch of a thing. Lips puckered out hard and far. Miyu closed her eyes until her eyelashes crinkled and Aoi stared, eyes wide and glistening, as she was kissed suddenly and without recourse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   But it was a kiss that tasted like rainbow ice-cream cake. Aoi was certain. Tasting Miyu tasted like the cotton candy and swirls of caramel and chocolate and vanilla. She had a bubble gum aftertaste, complete with a creamy sensation of something slowly melting. She tasted all the bizarre and elusive notes that could only be described as the flavour of rainbow ice-cream. Aoi could feel the temperature drop around her as she all but got brain freeze as Miyu kissed her until she could kiss no more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She held the kiss until her lips and her lungs ached. Miyu gasped and panted for air when she broke the kiss. Aoi stood still, in complete awe of Miyu, who smiled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “So?” she asked. “Am I? Am I cake? Oooh, what to do I taste like?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi couldn’t find her words but she watched as Miyu tried licking her hands, the dried blood that she had smeared away crackled and she stuck her tongue out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Blegh… yuck…” she murmured to utter disdain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You’re not.” Aoi managed to pipe up all of a sudden. “You - You taste like rainbow ice-cream cake.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I do?” Miyu cooed, eyes going wide and she shone even in the dim light of the cement tunnel they were crammed inside of. “I’ve never had rainbow ice-cream cake before, I’m gonna ask my Mum if you can come over sometime and that she buys some and we can have rainbow ice-cream cake together. Doesn’t that sound fun?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi smiled gingerly. Meagerly. It did and it was a shame that such a sweet and flavourful promise could never have come to fruition as Aoi would later realise that Miyu asking such a request of her mother would come to crystallise why her mother found Aoi and, by extension, her brother suspicious rabble rousers. Not to mention the Lost Incident and the debacle of losing the ring would also loom not too far off this moment in time in the cold, cement tunnel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi felt something all but pierce her as she came to the ends of these ruminations. It hurt Aoi’s heart - and her stomach and her sense of taste - to have forgotten these precious, precious memories. She grimaced as the blush in her cheeks faded and her body cooled again after warming up so much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   How could she have ever forgotten? Her fingers curled in against her palm, hard, until her knuckles turned white. Actually, she did have a pretty good idea as to why these things would fade from her and not just because ten years had passed. That moment in time had been traumatic for various reasons - her parents dying, the insecurity of food and money, and more - but also because of her older brother, both distant and overbearing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Akira was a Plate. A Plate was someone who was not born able to taste what made Cakes unique nor were they born tasting uniquely sweet. Plates were tentatively called the majority population as there was an unknown number of Cakes who had never realised they were Cakes and assumed they were Plates.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Still, Aoi was willing to bet that it was Akira’s fault - for better or for worse - that Aoi had forgotten all about her first experience with a Cake as a Fork had been suppressed by him. A decade later, they were the nouveau riche and for a while, one of their biggest interpersonal woes was how difficult it was to get Aoi to eat. At the height of his nervousness to make sure that Aoi was getting all her vitamins and nutrients, she was seeing three different dieticians who specialise in helping Forks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   It wasn’t intentional, she knew that deeply, but it did make Aoi feel worse about her status as a Fork. She remembered how when she was six and he was sixteen, homeless for the first time, that Akira had to bribe her with lollipops and gumdrops, sitting outside of convenience stores, trying to get her to eat sandwiches with chicken and salad. She still carried that guilt of being an extra inconvenience in their trying times. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   So, possibly, the joy and thrill of what made being a Fork </span>
  <em>
    <span>fun</span>
  </em>
  <span> had been lost underneath all that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Even now, unearthing these memories of what joy of tasting a Cake, were sullied by the knowledge that Miyu was currently suffering. The Light Ignis had to pay, that much Aoi was certain, so she linked up with Aqua. To bring Miyu back - and maybe kiss her again, too, that would be nice, sweet, Aoi thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Unfortunately, good intentions were all well and fine but spoiled quicker than Aoi imagined. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She tried her best. She got further than she had in the past. But it turned all for naught as once more the burden fell to Playmaker. Bohman was a seemingly insurmountable and indomitable force; Aoi had duelled to the best of her ability as Blue Maiden, with Aqua by her side, but together, they had fallen. They had failed. And once more, Playmaker had to take his allies’ losses upon his own stead and continue on even as his own heart wailed in the sour agony of it all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    At least it turned out alright in the end. Aoi just wished she could have been there for it. For that moment when Bohman was defeated and all could sigh in relief. At least she could have been there, when it rained gold, and all could grin that it was finally over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Yet Aoi kept waiting… and waiting… and waiting. Aqua never returned. Ai did, however, but he was in such a state of grief that he was unwilling and unable to divulge a thing but it became starkly apparent to Aoi that Aqua was gone. Likely never to come back. And that notion harrowed her harshly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She and Aqua had made plans with good tidings to return to Miyu’s bedside together. Now Aoi would have to do it alone. But she wanted to see her sweet Miyu again so badly but it was so terrifying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   What if Miyu was nothing like how Aoi remembered?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   What if she was nothing like how Miyu remembered?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   What if…?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The thoughts were spiralling and endless. They left Aoi unable to leave her room for a couple days. Unable to eat little more than ice-cream and extremely sweetened yogurt to her older brother’s vast displeasure but he knew that she needed some space and comfort. So, he tried his best and treated her fragilely until Aoi was finally able to emerge from her room, all her teardrops cried, and she put on something nice to wear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She had a hospital visitation that she needed to make. She just hoped that Miyu would still be there, at that place that Aqua had found her when she had first entered the human world to find her Origin. She also hoped that it would be just like when she had woken up from her own coma with days and days of observation and remission and doing nothing in the wake of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi stopped to get flowers on the way. She thought it would be a kind or thoughtful gesture. She never received any flowers when she got out of the hospital. A statement reading that she had no close friends and that her brother saw too much of the big picture and not enough of the small details as flowers were prone to wilting so what would be the point?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi thought so long as they were vivid and vibrant, wondrously fragrant and sweet, for just a moment that would be enough. She had a feeling that Miyu would feel the same so Aoi purchased a bouquet of white flowers encased in light blue cellophane before continuing on with her journey to Miyu’s hospital which was out of many of the precincts and boundaries that Aoi visited in Den City. It was strange to think they were so close and yet so far but the city was big and sprawling, all lit up with electric lights.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Multiple people flashed her a smile when they saw her carrying the bouquet. Those smiles all existed on a continuum of happy and sad with the sadder smiles, quietly empathetic, had become more frequent as Aoi entered the hospital as compared to those unknowing, bright smirks that she had collected closer to the florist or at bus stops. At the hospital, it was cold and quiet. She said hello to the receptionist and she made an interview to see if she could visit Miyu and she was in luck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   A room on the third floor and in the sixth room, it really wasn’t that hard to find yet Aoi was breathless by the time that she had arrived in front of that door. There was a whiteboard marker plaque with Miyu’s name on it but Aoi, strangely enough, didn’t feel the need to knock. She knew she would be welcome so she pushed open the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu’s head turned immediately. She had been sitting up with a pillow against her, watching the television mounted on the wall across from her. At first she was on edge, nothing was scheduled for right now but that single second of apprehension dissipated when she saw that face. Those eyes. That hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Aoi-chan…” she gasped breathlessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu sounded so elated. Her eyes were wide with wonder and magic. Aoi’s heart leapt to her throat. She almost dropped her bouquet but she made sure to hold onto it tighter as she broke one of the golden rules of hospitals: no running in the halls or the rooms. Ten years of feelings - some she knew, some she did, and some zany and miscellaneous - simply exploded inside of her and she was propelled forward.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   She collapsed at Miyu’s bedside and she leaned over to hug Aoi. Aoi buried her face in the sheets at Miyu’s stomach and she cried. They both cried. It was messy and cathartic and Aoi lifted her head first. Miyu looked so beautiful in her disbelief. Her steely blue eyes were wet and shining with tears and love.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I-I’m so sorry.” Miyu stuttered out. All the rehearsals in her head vanished. “I should have… I should have done something. Y-You were so brave, Aoi-chan, thank you so much. I - I wish I could have been as brave as you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi was heartbroken to hear Miyu say that and so, she blurted it out, “I know about the Lost Incident.” she said. “And you are so, so, so, much braver than I ever could have been.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Miyu froze. She looked as though she had been caught in a deep freeze of dry ice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “H-How do you know about the Lost Incident?” Miyu stammered out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi began to get up off her knees. She sat at Miyu’s bed side and she caressed the side of Miyu’s face. She paled suddenly but her round cheeks were soft. Aoi tucked a strand of Miyu’s long, straight hair behind her ear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We have a lot to talk about.” Aoi confessed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “We do.” Miyu agreed, her voice going a little high. “Where to start, ain’t that the question?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “It is.” Aoi replied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “But I know where I want to start.” Miyu said and she lifted her face to Aoi. “I want to know if you still wanna have that ice-cream date after all this time. Like, what kind of flavour is rainbow ice-cream, anyway, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi giggled. There were bigger and more pressing issues at this bedside but it heartened her to start soft and comforting rather than starting dark and disconcerting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “It’s tasty, that’s what it is.” Aoi murmured. She leaned in and she let Miyu kiss her again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Aoi sighed into the kiss. She closed her eyes, relaxed, and she was taken by the dulcet taste of what Miyu had to offer her as Cake before a Fork. The salt of her tears that had dribbled down to the edges of her mouth tasted like sugar. She possessed the flavour of sublime nostalgia: of halcyon, summer afternoons and ice-cream eaten with a grin, with it dripping down over her hands. She was delicious. And Aoi kissed harder, trying to eat her Cake and then some, making Miyu moan and paw at her, wanting to be eaten.</span>
</p>
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